


my stairway lies on the whispering wind

by AllonsyHelen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky has memories and is sad, Bucky wanders New York, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4395473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllonsyHelen/pseuds/AllonsyHelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pull of home is too much for even the strongest Soviet programming to withhold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my stairway lies on the whispering wind

_it’s whispered that soon, if we all call the tune,_  
_then the piper will lead us to reason._  
_and a new day will dawn for those who stand long,  
_ _and the forests will echo with laughter_

_Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin_

 

There is something about a stairway to heaven, I’m not sure what it is – not sure, not sure, not sure, not sure of much at all except that I have five fingers that I was not born with, but… yes, yes, _yes yes yes_ I was _born_ with these. I came into existence – the I is me now, whoever I was before does not matter—

And I told myself that every day as this winter drags across the rocky cliffs that my brain has become. But now it’s been too long out of the cold and I am beginning to thaw – ice melts in the absence of the freeze – and what is left but pebbles against stone, a bang, my friend –

My friend, my friend, my friend, his five fingers reaching, my five fingers in the air –

The target is on the move and my mind switches off for the other half of my brain to take over. I am ЗИМНИЙ ВОИН _._ I am an asset. I am my mission.

I squint an eye, close the other – one sees through the scope, the other sees the utter blankness that my eyelid has to offer. There is no fantasy. There is no friend. The only finger that matters is the finger on the trigger.

My brain tells my finger to squeeze – but no. Wait. The target looks up, and I inch away from the edge of the roof, and the target looks back to the street and now his bodyguard has caught up with him, and he is in the way, and I need to wait again. I picked up a newspaper last night. I do not know why. I do not require entertainment, and yet. The thaw.

The date – yesterday – **December 15, 1991** – feels wrong. I should not be here. I should not be this. I feel a scratch at the back of my mind, like I’m missing an important meeting. Like someone will come to retrieve me any moment. “Ты опоздал. Где ты был? Я искал тебя.” Or maybe it will say, “You are late. Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.” Maybe the voice will have an American accent. Maybe it will be from Brooklyn. The thought relaxes my shoulders.

How do I know about Brooklyn accents? This information was not downloaded by the brain during the mission briefing.

I cannot kill the target from the rooftop. There will need to be another way. This is not going to work. The target will finish his business in Manhattan tonight before heading back to Long Island. I will be able to leave this city. The snow will return to the mountaintops and I will take comfort in the freeze. The thaw is beginning to reach something deeper inside. Somewhere I have not been in a very long time. I have not been there since

The stairway song is still playing in the building below me, beneath the roof where I’ve been waiting, silent. No one has seen me in – in – how long has it been? Time frays – and the cold in the air is not enough to stop the thaw.

There is a stairway to heaven. Something is dragging in the back of my head and my shoulders hunch with the weight of it.

I sit. I wait. I must get to the target soon. I cannot live like this much longer, alone in this world with the feeling returning to each thawed nerve ending, my heart rate speeding, and my mind… The ice, snow… Turning to water, trickling like a waterfall, oh _God_ it hurts, and I look at my hands. One glints light from the sun. A few days ago I did not know there was something unusual about it.

But now –

I was not born with this. I flex it and feel the jolt of pain down my spine that accompanies this motion. Was there a time I did not feel this when I wiggled my fingers, clenched my fist?

_Laughter. It bounces off the sides of the other mountains, echoes through the warming air,_ and it has something to do with the view I see right now. This is New York. I have never been here. And yet the air feels familiar.

The problem with the target’s being so elusive is that I spend a lot of time sitting, waiting… thinking… remembering…

Can they hear my thoughts? I press the fingers of my right hand to my chest. My heart skips and shudders. Can they hear that? Can they hear the laughter too? It’s not my own laughter (I know this for sure; I tested it out, quietly, into the December air, hours or days ago, and it sounded nothing like this. It sounded empty. This laughter I hear echoes of now is not empty at all, it holds a life inside it, but I don’t know what life that is).

I move my hand through the air. It is not thick. I stick out my tongue. I can taste nothing. Where did this air come from? Where in my past has it traveled from?

I sit against the wall sheltering me from the jump that could end it – I’ve thought about it, as I’ve sat on this roof. Of course I have. But end what, I don’t know, and where would I go?

The stairway. I could go on the stairway. The song has ended but somehow it continues between my ears.

Could I? Do I have a stairway? Could I climb it?

The image of blood on metal fingers flashes before my eyes. I decide that I could not.

I peer over the side of the wall, down to the sidewalk. The target is not there.

I stand; my movements are uncertain, because I haven’t planned them. There has been no order to do this, or to do anything other than **kill**. But I stand anyway, and the movement has to do with springtime, but I don’t know what.

I leave the rifle. The target is inside the building across the street and will be there when I return. They will both be here when I return.

_No one will know, Buck._

Another echo; it comes suddenly and it startles me; is there someone here, putting these thoughts inside of me? I look around, through the corners of my eyes, but I see nothing. My own hair blows in the wind. I have thirteen knives.

I walk down the stairs. I pass the room that was playing the music, but the song has ended for them. It keeps going for me, as I continue down to the street.

No one has ordered me. Nothing is stopping me. I could get hurt, I could –

_Shocks. Blood. Something grips me. I cannot move. I am cold. I am pain. Deliverer and receiver._

\-- I continue walking toward something. What am I walking toward. What am I doing. Why. Why.

I have ten fingers but I was only born with five of them. Where are the other five fingers I called my own? Are they here? Is that what I’m walking toward?

The city passes as I stand still. My mind moves through a thick syrup and I am not afraid of the whips, shocks, or cold, because I’m walking toward a place I will be warm. I know I will be warm there because I have been warm there before.

_I have also been cold there. My teeth chatter. There is skin that does not belong to me, a heartbeat that is not mine, teeth that are not mine. Lips. Lips that are not mine._

The mountainscape in my head changes as I watch. It becomes a stairway. That stairway. The music repeats in my mind. I climb. I climb the stairway.

The city drags itself past. I am traveling south. The sun is over my head. The people do not see me. No one sees me.

This is good.

This is good.

There is a river, a bridge, and I kiss the thought as it floats through my brain – down the stairs, _cold water, lungs filling up, no more chains_ – but this is not my direction of travel. I am moving south. Up the stairway.

The buildings are different. I taste the air again. I was wrong before. I have been here. I have been here many times. I can’t recall the missions. What mission brought me here?

_Mrs. Trevors has her bloomers hanging out, let’s go see, oh but Stevie let’s be stealthy, let’s be detectives, let’s go undercover_

_Undercover_

_Undercover_

_Let’s hide_

_Under covers_

These thoughts travel more quickly up the stairway than I do. I am not tired but the city moves slower here. I turn. I know the streets but I have not seen them. I know the pavement. I know the names. I do not know the people. I do not know the stores. I do not know where my five fingers went, and why the new ones hurt my spine.

There is rust in my mind. The gears beneath the stairway clunk, but they do move. In a mind of ice the movement is jarring. I need to catch my breath; the city will not stop moving. I am getting close.

_I’ll go to the pharmacy, honest, Bucky, it’s no problem! I’ll go!_

_How? You can’t stop coughing you big ol’ idiot_

_A puffed up chest. A painful breath. A cough. A gasp._

_I’m goin for ya, and you better not have moved from that bed when I get back, ya hear? Your momma doesn’t wanna get off her shift to find your lumpy, ugly corpse on the kitchen floor which’ll need moppin. And I ain’t tuckin your ugly dead mug in between those nice lookin sheets either. So you just stay put._

There is sea air. I recognize it. I know I’ve been here. What mission? What mission?

_Change falls onto the table. A breathy laugh._

_And what’s on the menu for tonight, folks?_

_Well chef, what can ya make with beans and bread?_

_I can make the most delicious sandwich ya ever did eat, sir, and I’ll pair it with the finest dirty water to ever grace your lips_

_A feast! How’d I ever deserve it?_

I lurch to a stop. I am here. This is where my missing fingers, my hand, my arm is. This is where the change on the table is. This is the top of the stairway.

The red of the brick is faded but when the change fell it wasn’t much redder. When my hand dropped the coins… My hand…

I gaze up. The city has stopped moving, so has the stairway, so have I, but my mind continues. The melting icicles of my memory drip, drip, drip…

_What a dump!_

_At least we got a dump_

The front doorknob turns, the apartment door is off its hinges – my heart speeds – no one is home –

“I’m back.”

My voice. My own voice. It startles. For a moment, I thought it was someone else.

Nothing responds. No one responds. What would respond. Who.

The apartment is empty.

_Don’t win the war till I get there._

_Bucky!_

My spine cringes as the photos on a shelf crash on the floor. My metal arm glints. My metal arm. My arm.

The door behind me is filled. There is a person. An echo rises – my voice – again – my teeth press together, the _S_ barely escapes with the _t_ to follow shortly, before something grips me, a man whispers in my ear: _Sputnik_. And the world, the echoes, the mountains, disappear. And I am theirs again.

I fall backwards down the stairway to heaven.

 

Two days later Howard Stark is dead and the Winter Soldier’s fresh injuries are frozen over.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Google Translate for being my least reliable but everpresent friend. If anybody speaks Russian and has corrections for this, that would be welcome:  
> ЗИМНИЙ ВОИН = Winter Soldier  
> Ты опоздал. Где ты был? Я искал тебя. = You are late. Where have you been? I've been looking for you.
> 
> Sputnik is a code word to basically shut the Winter Soldier down. When he hears it, he becomes a limp rag. In other words, HYDRA are bastards and I hate them.
> 
> And credit where credit is due to Led Zeppelin for offering the tune that winds through this little fic.
> 
> Do let me know if you enjoyed this, it's a little different from what I typically write so I hope I did our Bucky justice!


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